Sunday, 30 November 2008

So I am back from the very awesome Ruxcon and its after party. It felt good to be among my own people, I saw at least two other geeks wearing a "There's no place like 127.0.0.1" T-shirt, and several with other witty, geeky and or security related repartee.I saw some awesome talks of which I will go into more detail later. I also met the venerable Patrick Gray of the Risky business podcast and Adam Boileau one of his regular knowledgeable guests.Some standout talks so far have been Enterprise Security, Softer than the foam on my Frappuccino by the LUMC Crew and Ghost Recon: Subverting Local Networks by Berne Campbell, I recommend you download them with slides when/if they become available.Well peace out all.

Thursday, 13 November 2008

Welcome everyone to my Security blog, I will have migrated over previous posts from http://www.morganstorey.com as we go.All of the ones from the previous few months have been coppied across, any beyond that will have been indexed by google(and was before I used tags so it will take to long).I have added RSS and ATOM feeds to both blogs, please subscribe over on the left if it interests you.

So if I haven't already ranted at you in some way shape or form, you may not know of the Australian government's short-sighted plan to add us to the ranks of oppressive regimes such as Iran and China. In fact that is unfair as Iran's proxy is considered to be looser than the one Senator Conroy wants to implement.The long and short of it is that Conroy wants to restrict what pages are available to Australian internet users. Sure it is for the kids (won't someone think of the children)… But as I have said to people I would rather my children see the entirety of the disgusting underbelly of the internet than have one single thought provoking site blocked. Not to mention the degradation to performance in a country that is already considered one of the worst in the world for connectivity. In Sweden groups appealed to the government saying 100mbps is welfare. Here most people are still on 1/200th that speed, and with Conroys plan that 1/200th would lose anywhere from 2-80% of its speed, welcome back to dial-up days.There are a plethora of sites that are likely to be blocked because they aren't "kid" friendly. June next year you will probably see the below when going to user content generated sites such as Youtube and Facebook:Here is a news flash senator; kids get hold of porn even if you restrict it, even in the pre-internet days. So what your doing will only have negative effects. Parents with no IT knowledge will have a false sense of security and not monitor their kids browsing habits, these same kids will find ways round your precious filter, and these methods that will become popular may even make it harder for parents and educators to monitor their usage. The filter will slow down internet access and again the people with little IT knowledge will have no idea how to get around it for legitimate sites that are blocked. Then there is the cost which you are expecting ISP's to mostly cover off their own bat, which will increase internet costs in a country that already pays too much for too little.Way to go Senator you deserve your award:I feel lost; I don't know what to do. I feel as though someone has decided freedom of information is a bad idea, so let's mandate it. Then what do you do. Once the book burning starts it is hard to stop.I have emailed the Senator and his opponents, and the letters are in the mail.I urge everyone to look at the following sites and take action: http://nocleanfeed.com your silence is all they need to pass this and then you are no better than them.Peace out all, except Conroy and his supporters who can just unplug their computers, televisions, and burn their books for the same effect they are trying to mandate.

PS: I am starting up a dedicated security Blog as I want to separate the two, this of course crosses both blogs so expect to see it on both. My new Security blog is linked on the left or here: http://security.morganstorey.com